1. Field of the Invention
This invention pertains generally to particle detection, and more particularly to detection of airborne particles, including biological, chemical and radiological agents.
2. Description of Related Art
There is a need to detect airborne particulates, particularly respirable size particles, for various health, environmental, safety and security reasons. Airborne particulate contaminants, both man-made and naturally occurring, are all around us. Some can be extremely hazardous. Airborne biological, radiological or chemical particulates pose a terrorist threat. The Threat Agent Cloud Tactical Intercept And Countermeasure (TACTIC) program is directed to developing detection technologies to identify these potential threats. The objective is to detect an agent in about one minute, with a probability of detection of at least 0.9 and a probability of false alarm of less than 0.01.
One approach is to sample air and to collect particles in a media, and then submit the media to a laboratory for analysis. While this approach may be accurate, it is cumbersome and slow. Another approach is to use uv/vis excitation with scattered or fluorescent light detection, which is real-time, but does not effectively discriminate or identify the particulate type.
Accordingly it is desirable to provide an improved method and apparatus for detecting and discriminating airborne particulates. The method should be real-time and detect the particulates while airborne.